Human brains are kind of strange things, especially when it comes to tasks like driving. We’re really surprisingly good at driving, considering that nothing in our evolution could have predicted that we’d need to process visual information and react to it physically at speeds of a mile-a-minute, yet we somehow can pull it off just fine. At the same time, it’s remarkable how much we rely on visual cues like road lines and markings. When those visual cues are disordered, even if rationally we can understand that something is off, and we can see what should be right, just the presence of the misplaced marker manages to make everything really confusing. A great demonstration of this happened on Interstate 95 around Jacksonville, Florida, when a 23-mile long yellow line appeared on the highway, weaving among lanes and generally being confusing.
The line looks pretty much just like a conventional yellow road marking-type of line, though it’s just one line, not a double yellow or a broken yellow or some combination. Just a yellow line, straight but meandering among lanes with the ruthless abandon of a flock of starlings.
Local news coverage has been predictably delighted, with news trucks following the line from where it starts at the base of the Acosta Bridge to where it ends, at the gates of a company in an industrial park called Acme Barricades:
It’s probably worth noting that Acme Barricades lists among its services Thermoplastic Pavement Marking and Profiled Pavement Marking, and Road Paint striping, any of which could have been the method used to lay down 23 miles of yellow stripe.
So far no company, Acme included, has taken credit for the Great Yellow Stripe, but is it really that hard to figure out? It leads right to a company with the equipment to paint road lines? Maybe someone forgot to turn off the line-spigot on the back of the truck? I’m just wildly guessing here, not accusing anyone of anything, mind you.
I mean, this could also be a set-up from a rival road striping firm? Does Acme Barricades have any enemies? Did they send one too many defective pairs of rocket shoes to a certain coyote?
As you can see from the videos, the line was at the very least confusing to drivers, and would likely play havoc with automated lane-keeping and semi-automated driving systems. It’s remarkable to think about how something as minor as an unexpected line of color can cause so many problems, but that’s just how it works.
The Florida Department of Transportation (FDOT) is in for a tricky time as they figure out how to remove the line. Painting over it may simply make it even more visually prominent, for example.
FDOT Community Outreach Manager Hampton Ray was asked by news outlets of the department’s plans:
“We’re going to have an operation, where we take a street sweeper, with a wire brush, and we will be going and doing our best to dislodge some of the yellow paint from the roadway. We do not expect this to be the end-all solution.”
Man, what a mess. I tried reaching out to Acme Barricades, but got no response. I wonder if everyone in Acme Barricades was just told to lay low until the shit blows over?
Its hilarious to watch teslas loose their minds over this, it starts on the north side and literally ends across the street from me, I live in beachwalk off 210 which is the exit this takes and ACME is my neighbor. I drive a 16 yearold S class so I thought it was nothing. After watching Cadillacs, Teslas and even Subarus wiggling and jerking in lane while drivers fight their cars, it has become better than Youtube.
up here in the pacific northwest we had a barrel of white printers ink tip over. from north of seattle to bellingham the road was graffitied. to add insult to injury it happened at night so many, many following cars sported white spots everywhere. i also see the dot spilled yellow paint on i-5 for a distance recently!
A similar thing occurred in Atlanta on I-85/75. It was a long, weirdly spatter free white line subdividing a lane that appeared overnight. However, the slow trickling start to it betrayed its origins as a leaking paint can.
“Maybe someone forgot to turn off the line-spigot on the back of the truck? “
That’s what my money is on.
“The Florida Department of Transportation (FDOT) is in for a tricky time as they figure out how to remove the line”
Rolls eyes… it’s not complicated. It needs to be scraped off. They should know this already.
How did the driver go 23 miles with people honking and pointing?
It’s Florida, that’s just the normal state of things
so no one’s Subaru has automatically lane changed into another car? There are no line of Tesla’s hoggin two lanes running down the road? Seriously…no crashes because of this?
My Crosstrek tried to change lanes suddenly after the ES system got confused by reflections on the highway. We were driving directly into the sun in the early evening this past weekend.
I can’t imagine how it would have behaved in this scenario.
This has to have caused some pretty scary incidents by automated lane keeping assistants.
With the Subaru system, it will disengage after you ignore the warning or screw up three times in a row, but it will eventually reengage if you don’t manually override it.
I think those systems only operate if they can read both lines, or a line and an edge of the road. It would either ignore the one that doesn’t match any other line, or just shut off because it’s can’t figure it out.
Ironically this happened in Florida last year – a rental Outback, two-lane road approaching road construction with concrete barriers on the right shoulder, the car saw those and threw itself left…right into oncoming traffic, which happened to be a sheriffs deputy who decided to investigate if I was drunk, which was reasonable given the situation. Upon approaching he said out load “oh – it’s a Subaru”. He understood quickly the car attempted to murder me and sent me on my way.
nope–not the case with our Crosstrek. It will work with one line as well.
Also, there’s a story that was just posted on the old lighting site discussing this very scenario:
Was there any evidence of a coyote looking slightly worse for wear in the vicinity?
So, nobody at Acme will take responsibility or say anything publicly? That’s real big my “I am not responsible for the yellow line on I-95” has people asking a lot of questions already answered by my shirt energy.
I once was behind a delivery truck that had yellow liquid running out of the cargo area and leaving a similar, but much sloppier, trail along the road. Some of it got on my bumper and quarter panel before I was able to get around the truck. Luckily, it all washed off. I was kind of hoping to develop super powers like Chevy Chase in Modern Problems, but so far no luck.
You beat me to it with the Modern Problems reference!